My One And Only (23 page)

Visibly startled, Harrison flinched. "What?"

Abby nodded. "It's true. Someone tried to come in through the window. He didn't get in, though." Harrison, she saw, was beginning to look a little pale. Deirdre was watching him through narrowed eyes.

Ethan alone seemed undaunted by the conversation. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?" he asked Harrison.

Rage registered on Harrison's face. "No, damn you."

"Ethan." Abby put a hand on his knee.

He covered it with a bruising grip. "The perpetrator left something at the scene," he said with icy calm. "A jack-of-spades playing card in an envelope."

Harrison swore sharply. "The bastard."

Ethan continued. "Is there anything you'd like to add now?"

Harrison lowered his head into his hands. "Oh, God. I never meant—it wasn't supposed to come to this."

"What's going on?" Abby asked. She looked at Ethan. His gaze remained steadily on his father.

Deidre held out a hand to her. "Abby, dear—"

"No," Harrison said, and lifted his head. "I'll tell her." He looked shaken. Abby had never seen him when he didn't look perfectly polished and poised, but the man who faced her now looked like a shell. "Abigail, whatever you believe, you have to know I would never have done anything to hurt you."

Abby frowned. "Of course I know that."

He nodded. "Ethan is right about a number of things. I'm sure you know by now that MDS got into this mess because I was being blackmailed."

That drew a startled gasp from Deirdre. "Harrison!"

He covered her hand with his. "It's all right, Deirdre. It's not as dire as you think."

"My God," she said. "Blackmail. Did you call the police?"

"No." He exhaled a long sigh. "At first I thought I could make it go away—just like before."

"Before?" she asked.

Abby felt Ethan's fingers tighten on hers. She stole a glance at him. Though his features were composed in an expressionless mask, his jaw was set in a hard line that betrayed an inner tension.

Harrison continued. "I've made some pretty horrific mistakes in my life, and until now, maybe I was too much of a coward to face them." He sounded beaten.

Abby felt the pain in his words. She could see what the confession was costing him, and had she not had an incontrovertible conviction that they'd reached the point of no return, she would have stopped him.

He wiped a hand over his face. "But I'd lived with that long enough," he added.

When he looked at Abby again, his eyes were clear. She'd ne
ver noticed how much they resem
bled Ethan's. "Abby," he said, "you'll never know how much I regret that you got dragged into this. If I could have changed—" He shook his head. "I had no idea this was going to happen."

Deirdre turned toward him. "For God's sake, Harrison, what
are
you talking about?"

"When I was a young man"—his voice had a hollow tone—"I met a woman I fell in love with." He glanced at Ethan. "For all my faults, Ethan, I
did love your mother." Clouds gathered in h
is ex
pression. "Lina was the most alive and fascinating person I'd ever know."

Beside her, Abby felt Ethan tense. She shifted her hand in his to twine their fingers together. He gave no other sign of his reaction to the story. "You couldn't marry her," Abby said to Harrison.

His gaze became teary. "I could have. If I'd had the courage to stand up to Father, I could have."

Deirdre shook her head. "Harrison, you know what would have happened."

"He would have cut me off," Harrison a
c
knowledged, and glanced at his sister. "But I never told you that he threatened to cut the rest of you off as well. He knew I di
dn't care. I was young and reck
less, and I didn't think it would matter if I couldn't have his money. So he told me it was time I learned what it meant to have responsibility for a family like ours. If I wanted to support Lina on my own, then I could also support the rest of you."

Deirdre gasped and raised a hand to her throat. "My God! You never told us that!"

Harrison nodded. "I couldn't. I was afraid you'd all think I was a spineless coward for not throwing it back in his face." He looked at Ethan again. "Then your mother got pregnant. And when she told me we were going to have you, that was probably the single happiest day of my life. I felt certain Father would succumb when he realized we were talking about his grandchild."

"But he didn't." Ethan's voice was hard and immobile.

"He was furious," Harrison said. "He threatened your mother into getting an abortion, and she told him to go to hell." A little half smile tugged at his lips. "I wish you had known her longer. She was pure fire, that woman."

"So instead of marrying her anyway," Ethan said, "you let your father send her away."

"No." Harrison shook his head. "God, no. Lina left. I couldn't fin
d her anywhere. I hired investi
gators to track her down, but nothing turned up. I had no idea what had happened to either of you for six years."

Deirdre nodded emphatically. "It's true, Ethan. Harrison and I talked about it frequently. He had—what was it?" She looked at her brother. "Six different investigators trying to find her."

"Eight," Harrison replied. "Lina disappeared. I always worried about what Father might have threatened her with. Connie assured me she'd taken care of Lina."

"Connie?" Deirdre said with a frown. "She's involved in this?"

Harrison nodded. "Connie was still married to Father during the worst of this. She intervened on Lina's behalf, but she'd never reveal where you
went, Ethan."

"Oklahoma," Ethan said. "I never knew how
we got there, but we ended up in Oklahoma."

"Connie gave Lina money to help her get out of Chicago, and advised her to start over. She told her to stay as invisible as possible."

"My mother would never use credit. She worked cash jobs only. She didn't want to be found."

Harrison agreed. "I think Father threatened to take you away from her." He gave Ethan a look that was nothing short of pleading. "I didn't know, Ethan. I swear I didn't know."

"My mother got ill," Ethan said to no one in particular. "She didn't know what to do. She couldn't reach Connie."

"She was in Florida by then," Harrison explained. "No one had heard from Lina since she left, and Connie had lost touch with her." Harrison squared his shoulders. "Then Lina brought you back. She was so ill by then."

Deirdre concurred. "She looked awful."

Harrison went on. "I felt like I had finally been given a second chance to make things right. I told Father I was going to marry her."

"But you didn't," Abby said.

"Lina wouldn't," Harrison insisted. He nodded at Ethan's raised eyebrow. "I begged her. I swear I did."

"It's true," Deirdre told her nephew. "I was there for several of the conversations they had. Your mother didn't want you to become a Montgomery."

"Can you blame her?" Ethan's voice was so flat and emotionless, Abby felt like weeping. When she thought of the strife of his childhood, she realized how much richer her own had been.

"Not really," Harrison answered. "But I was concerned about my ability to protect you when she died."

"Your father didn't throw me out," Ethan pointed out.

"Connie wouldn't let him. And neither would I. I agreed not to formally adopt you if he'd let me make sure you were financially secure." Harrison's face registered his pain at the memory. "I will never forgive myself for how much I hurt you."

Abby studied him for a moment. "What about after?" she prompted.

"After?" Harrison looked at her.

"After your father died. What happened then?"

"Ethan, you were nine years old by then. And you already resented the hell out of me." Ethan didn't respond, so Harrison continued. "I didn't see any reason to m
ake the matter worse than it al
ready was. I—I didn't do all I could have. Maybe I was weak, or immature in a way—I don't know. I had no idea how to reach you. You were sullen and withdrawn."

"So you turned me over to Letty?" Ethan asked, his tone dry.

"It wasn't like that," Harrison protested. "I'm sure you don't rem
ember, but I tried. I did every
thing I knew how to do, and you wouldn't respond to me. I'd never been a father before. Hell, I'd never had a father to speak of. I'd had a despot."

Ethan surged up from the arm of Abby's chair and crossed the office to stare out the window, as if he could no longer bear to watch as the story unfolded.

Harrison looked at Abby. "You already know the rest. Things went from bad to worse, and Ethan left home at eighteen."

"Tell Abby," Ethan said from the window, "where she fits into this."

Harrison dropped his head back against the sofa with a low groan. "The year after Lina left Chicago, I enlisted in the army."

"Harrison!" Deirdre stared at him. "Are you serious?"

"Yes." He nodded. "I was supposed to go to Vietnam. Father was furious."

"You were in college," Deirdre pointed out. "You could have been deferred."

"I didn't want that. I couldn't find Lina, and I hated Father for what he'd done to us. I wanted to go. I think," he confessed, "I wanted to die."

Abby's stomach had started to twist into knots. "You knew my father," she said. "Didn't you?"

Harrison shook his head. "Not then. Later."

Deirdre was confused. "But how—"

Harrison interrupted her. "Father was livid when he found out. He wasn't about to let me get
myself killed. There had to be a Montgomery to run his empire." Harrison's laugh was humorless. "I think he secretly hoped it wouldn't be me—that maybe Connie could produce a second heir for him. But when she couldn't stand living with him anymore, he had to accept that I was his last hope. That's probably what killed him."

"But my father—" Abby insisted.

Harrison flashed her a faint smile. "Sorry, darling. I'm getting there. I enlisted, and Father was going to kill me before he let me leave. So he pulled some strings at the Pentagon. MDS was heavily into defense contracts at the time. Still, I never knew how he did it."

"Colonel Don Fisk," Ethan said from his position by the window.

Harrison turned to him in surprise. "What?"

Ethan faced them again. He leaned back against the window with his arms folded over his chest. Abby searched his face for something that might tell her what he was thinking.

"Don Fisk," he repeated. "He was a low-level Pentagon official with ties to the Chicago recruiting office." He looked at Abby, his gaze intent. "He knew Montgomery because of a few shady deals with defense suppliers."

Deirdre muttered a disgusted curse. "That doesn't surprise me. Father liked to make money— and he had no qualms about how he did it."

"We had several bids," Harrison added, "that
Fisk had fixed to ensure we came in low. Father gave him a kickback on every contract the Pentagon awarded us."

"So when the old man needed help to bail out his son"—Ethan
waved his hand in Harrison's di
rection—"he called on Fisk."

Harrison nodded in agreement. Ethan continued. "At the time, Abby, your father was working in the recruiting office here in Chicago. Fisk pressured him to rate Harrison ineligible. I'm sure he was threatened."

"They turned me down," Harrison told Abby. "I never knew why."

"Did my father know why Fisk was involved?" Abby asked Ethan.

"Not at first," Ethan said. "But Don Fisk got greedy. He realized that Harrison's father was in a position to ease his transition into retirement."

"He called my father," Harrison said, "and told him that if he didn
't arrange for his early retire
ment and a high-paying job with a defense contractor, he'd reveal what he'd done on my behalf."

Deirdre's laugh was derisive. "I can imagine how well Father responded to that."

"He didn't take threats well," Harrison agreed. "He decided the only thing to do was to get rid of whatever evidence Fisk had. So he had your father put on an active-duty roster and sent to Vietnam."

"Three years after I was bo
rn
," Abby recalled. "My mother told me."

Harrison leaned forward on the sofa to bury his face in his hands. "It all went away for a while. While your father was gone, Fisk had no recourse but to keep quiet."
His face had paled. "I think Fa
ther hoped your dad wouldn't return."

"But he did," Abby said.

"Yes," Harrison answered, "but by then Fisk had already left the Pentagon for his own tour in Vietnam. I'm certain Father pulled strings to arrange that."

"What happened when Dad returned?" Abby asked.

"Montgomery was still nervous," Ethan explained. "MDS was heavily invested in the defense industry, and with the antiwar movement growing, he didn't want to draw any negative attention. As insurance, he offered to pay your father ten thousand dollars a year to keep the issue quiet."